Building Something Meaningful - Unit 6 Reflections
I realize that I relate much of my
learning to raising a family. I was, and continue to be, immersed it
in as our children grow and become adults. One of the things that my
husband has always said is that we are not raising children, we are
raising adults. Our goal is not to have them master the things of
childhood, but the things of adulthood. We do not stunt their
development, we let them experience the things of childhood to learn
and develop into contributing members of society. We intervene in
their learning as needed, provide guidance and support, coaching and
correction. But we have to keep the end goal in mind.
This week I am reminded to keep the end goal in mind. The goal is that at the end of the program, not this course, that I will have the skills needed to be an ESL teacher. That means my stumbling attempts, my inabilities, and my shortcomings all serve a purpose. This is childhood, or if I am at all lucky, it is adolescence and I am on my way to maturity.
This week we have focused on lesson planning and I have tried to incorporate various methods that we learned about last week, or at least reflect on how they might impact the lessons I develop. I have tried to explore new ideas; to “scaffold” my own learning. One of the interesting things I learned was from an external resource I found on task-based learning. If you choose this link Task Based Teaching Information and Ideas (also on My Resources page), you will come to a site that provides information on the concepts of task-based learning in three categories – information gap, reasoning gap, and opinion gap. I believe that all these are included in my lesson plan TESL 0100 Lesson Plan 2 - Finding and Hiring A Babysitter for this week which you can access by clicking on this link or, find on my Lesson Plans page included in this blog. They are not explicitly identified, but they are there. When you read it, please remember that it is a work in progress, just like me. I have not incorporated everything from this weeks' ideas, or learning, into the plan because I need to be able to see how things develop, and to some degree for simplicity for the learners and the instructor. As I grow, I can scaffold my learning into this lesson plan by adapting and refining as I learn. I do not have to know it all now.
My goal is to help. To build meaning. I think this lesson plan, while having some gaps in development, is practical, useful, has fun elements, linguistic elements, and can be adapted for most environments where learning is planned, even in workplace language learning classes where people might need to consider childcare for working various shifts. I look forward to an opportunity to try it out, because I think it could help others learn something that could be useful to them.
In the meantime, in spite of my inability to actively apply everything from this week, I have learned. I have struggled with all the same things that language learners struggle with – available time for both passive and active learning activities, relevant reflection, and all the things of life that distract from learning.
In the end, I choose to be satisfied that I am on the path to adulthood. I think I will be a little more patient with my children again, and with the learners I work with. It is a process. The outcome is measurable and there is a “terminal objective” (Brown & Lee, pg. 199) that can be identified, but it might take more than one lesson to get me there. At the end of week six, I am satisfied with this realization. I am on the path to adulthood. It is a good path to be on.
References
Brown, D. & Lee, H. (2015) Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. Upper Saddle River: Pearson
This week I am reminded to keep the end goal in mind. The goal is that at the end of the program, not this course, that I will have the skills needed to be an ESL teacher. That means my stumbling attempts, my inabilities, and my shortcomings all serve a purpose. This is childhood, or if I am at all lucky, it is adolescence and I am on my way to maturity.
This week we have focused on lesson planning and I have tried to incorporate various methods that we learned about last week, or at least reflect on how they might impact the lessons I develop. I have tried to explore new ideas; to “scaffold” my own learning. One of the interesting things I learned was from an external resource I found on task-based learning. If you choose this link Task Based Teaching Information and Ideas (also on My Resources page), you will come to a site that provides information on the concepts of task-based learning in three categories – information gap, reasoning gap, and opinion gap. I believe that all these are included in my lesson plan TESL 0100 Lesson Plan 2 - Finding and Hiring A Babysitter for this week which you can access by clicking on this link or, find on my Lesson Plans page included in this blog. They are not explicitly identified, but they are there. When you read it, please remember that it is a work in progress, just like me. I have not incorporated everything from this weeks' ideas, or learning, into the plan because I need to be able to see how things develop, and to some degree for simplicity for the learners and the instructor. As I grow, I can scaffold my learning into this lesson plan by adapting and refining as I learn. I do not have to know it all now.
My goal is to help. To build meaning. I think this lesson plan, while having some gaps in development, is practical, useful, has fun elements, linguistic elements, and can be adapted for most environments where learning is planned, even in workplace language learning classes where people might need to consider childcare for working various shifts. I look forward to an opportunity to try it out, because I think it could help others learn something that could be useful to them.
In the meantime, in spite of my inability to actively apply everything from this week, I have learned. I have struggled with all the same things that language learners struggle with – available time for both passive and active learning activities, relevant reflection, and all the things of life that distract from learning.
In the end, I choose to be satisfied that I am on the path to adulthood. I think I will be a little more patient with my children again, and with the learners I work with. It is a process. The outcome is measurable and there is a “terminal objective” (Brown & Lee, pg. 199) that can be identified, but it might take more than one lesson to get me there. At the end of week six, I am satisfied with this realization. I am on the path to adulthood. It is a good path to be on.
References
Brown, D. & Lee, H. (2015) Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. Upper Saddle River: Pearson
Comments
Post a Comment